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CIA Information Warfare Succeeds: Occupation of Afghanistan forced to continue, Trump’s real crimes in Afghanistan ignored

By Ben Barbour | Global Research | July 5, 2020

On July 1st the House Armed Services Committee voted to hinder Donald Trump’s ability to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. House Democrats on the committee teamed up with Republicans, including Liz Cheney (daughter of war-architect Dick Cheney), to pass an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act “that prohibits Congress from spending money to pull US troops out of Afghanistan without first meeting a series of vague conditions that critics said appeared to prevent withdrawal.” Without any public debate the US will now continue its occupation after the CIA claimed that Russia paid Taliban-linked groups to kill American soldiers.

What’s the evidence? General John Nicholson speculated that Russia was arming the Taliban in 2017. In April 2019, three marines were killed in an attack that the Taliban claimed responsibility for. Unnamed intelligence officials believed that the Russians may have payed militants to attack US troops. In March 2020, The CIA concluded that the Russians were paying the bounties. They cited testimony from captured militants and pointed to a Seal Team Six raid of a Taliban outpost that resulted in the recovery of a half a million in cash.

That’s it. That’s all the information that the American public is allowed to know. It’s hardly even mentioned that the NSA disagreed with the CIA’s assessment, stating “the information wasn’t verified and that intelligence officials didn’t agree on it.” Furthermore, the Department of Defense (DOD) claimed that “to date, DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports.” Americans are taking the CIA’s word as gospel.

How exactly did the CIA conclude that the half a million in cash came from Russia and not from Taliban opium trafficking operations? The US military claimed that 60% of the Taliban’s funding comes from the opium trade. Is $500,000 in cash unheard of in opium sales? Who are these captured militants that claimed that Russia payed bounties for dead American soldiers? Were these militants tortured by the CIA? The CIA has the largest torture program in the world. Is the information reliable or was the information obtained under dubious circumstances? How do we even know these militants actually made these claims?

The foundation of the assertions is also questionable. Americans are supposed to believe that the Taliban had to be prompted to attack American soldiers. The US has been occupying Afghanistan for nearly 20 years. The war in Afghanistan has resulted in over 2,400 dead American soldiers and over 38,500 dead civilians. US soldiers have been targeted by the Taliban and an assortment of other militant groups over the past 19 years. That’s the cost of occupation. If over 38,500 civilians have been killed, then there are a lot of angry Afghans that lost family members. Russia does not need to pay the Taliban or any militant group to attack US soldiers. This should not need explanation. The rush to accuse Trump of treason has made Americans lose their critical thinking skills.

More partisan liberals are upset about Trump’s inaction over unproven allegations of Russian bounties than they are by Trump’s record setting bombing campaign in Afghanistan:

“in 2019, according to figures released by Air Force Central Command, the United States ‘dropped more munitions on Afghanistan than in any other year over the past decade.’ More bombs were dropped in most months of 2019 than in any previous months since records were first made publicly available in 2009.”

These bombings led to a massive surge in civilian casualties. In one case, at least 30 pine nut farmers were killed in a drone strike that resulted in zero militants being killed. Where is the outrage over this? How many more Afghans are going to die if Trump is pressed to be even more unhinged to prove he is not a traitor? The end game is more death and more occupation.

This new scandal being pushed by the CIA also conveniently deflects from Trump’s real scandals in Afghanistan. In June, Trump signed an executive order “imposing sanctions on several individuals associated with the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

The ICC is investigating war crimes in Afghanistan. Their investigations include potential American war crimes. They may even involve Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “Pompeo may be personally at risk for wrongdoing that the Court could uncover of CIA activities when he was the director of the agency.” The Trump administration is claiming that because the US has not ratified the Rome Statute, that the ICC has no legal basis to prosecute American war crimes. This is incorrect. The Rome Statute allows the ICC to prosecute non-party countries if war crimes are committed by that party in a country that has ratified the Rome Statute. Afghanistan has ratified the Rome Statue. That puts the US on the hook for potential war crimes committed in that region.

Needless to say, never-Trump neocons have been silent about Trump’s targeting of the ICC. Likewise, partisan liberals have not gone after Trump on this front either. The reasons are obvious. The Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations are culpable in war crimes in Afghanistan as well. The nearly two-decades long war is a bipartisan project. Furthermore, self-professed left-wingers and liberals are taking their cues from Bush-era neocons like David Frum, Bill Kristol, and an assortment of pro-war goons from the Lincoln Project Political Action Committee.

Russiagate broke partisan liberals’ brains. They are now calling for Trump to ramp up escalation in Afghanistan. They actually believe the absurd over-the-top ads put out by the Lincoln Project. Donald Trump ramped up the war in Afghanistan in 2017 when he did a 3,500-troop surge from 10,500 to 14,000 troops. Trump then increased bombing campaigns throughout his term and set records for bombings in 2019. Civilians casualties spiked. In June 2020, he targeted the ICC for having the audacity to look into US war crimes.

None of this barbarism earned Trump the ire of prominent neoconservatives and liberals. Trump is being vilified for having talks with the Taliban and taking steps towards scaling-down US troop presence. After four years of Russiagate hysteria the only explanation for Trump’s actions is capitulation to Russia. Afghan civilians be damned, Trump needs to ramp up again in Afghanistan to stop Putin or he’s a traitor! The neocon dogma pushed onto liberals by never-Trump Republicans did its job. Partisan liberals are parroting the line of the CIA. The attempt to sabotage talks with the Taliban and prevent troop withdrawals from Afghanistan worked.

“The Resistance” just helped push the continued occupation of Afghanistan to score cheap political points. The CIA thanks them for their “patriotism.”

Ben Barbour is an American geopolitical analyst.

July 5, 2020 - Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia, War Crimes | , ,

2 Comments »

  1. “Needless to say, never-Trump neocons have been silent about Trump’s targeting of the ICC. Likewise, partisan liberals have not gone after Trump on this front either. The reasons are obvious. The Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations are culpable in war crimes in Afghanistan as well. The nearly two-decades long war is a bipartisan project. Furthermore, self-professed left-wingers and liberals are taking their cues from Bush-era neocons like David Frum, Bill Kristol, and an assortment of pro-war goons from the Lincoln Project Political Action Committee”.

    Apparently, No one in the USA is responsible for anything, including war crimes. The CIA is accountable to no one,(no one can pull them into line) Ex CIA directors are not accountable for their nefarious crimes whilst in the Top Post, Ex Presidents are not accountable for war crimes, nor accountable for the Deaths of SO MANY American Soldiers who have to carry out orders requiring them to commit War Crimes.

    Anyone thinking that the American people have the power to vote them out is seriously deluded. As soon as Presidents are elected, the Moneymen move in and Buy the Congress, so it matters NOT whether the Repubs OR the Democrats win the Election.
    The Pentagon/MIC are totally unaccountable for TRILLIONS of Dollars that go missing, and somehow, the American people just accept this ludicrous situation, seemingly believing that the President can do no wrong.
    And, crimes like “9/11” are not investigated with integrity, with laughable reports like NIST being the “Be ALL and End All of the story, and NO ONE needed to face Trial in an American Court of law.

    The “CRIME SYNDICATE” that runs the USA is totally unaccountable to anyone…….It’s The Perfect Crime….

    Like

    Comment by brianharryaustralia | July 6, 2020 | Reply

  2. FIRST OFF!

    Politics in America is a PUNCH & JUDY SHOW, to entertain the fools who vote thinking that they have a say in who is elected!

    ANGELIC HILLARY

    5 THINGS CHRISTIANS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON’S FAITH
    Cathy Lynn Grossman | USA Today | Wednesday, October 14, 2015

    As she embarks, again, on a presidential campaign, one facet of Hillary Clinton, 67, is unchanged across her decades as a lawyer, first lady, senator and secretary of state: She was, is and likely always will be a social-justice-focused Methodist.

    (1) She was shaped by a saying popular among Methodists: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” says Paul Kengor in his book “God and Hillary Clinton.”

    As a girl, she was part of the guild that cleaned the altar at First United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Ill. As a teen, she visited inner-city Chicago churches with the youth pastor, Don Jones, her spiritual mentor until his death in 2009. During her husband’s presidency, the first family worshipped at Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church, and Time magazine described her membership in a bipartisan women’s prayer group organized by evangelicals.

    (2) Clinton’s been known to carry a Bible in her purse but, she told the 2007 CNN Faith Forum, “advertising” her faith “doesn’t come naturally to me.” Every vote Clinton made as a senator from New York, she said, was “a moral responsibility.” When asked at the forum why she thought God allows suffering, Clinton demurred on theology, then swiftly turned her answer to activism:
    “The existence of suffering calls us to action.”
    In a 1993 speech at the University of Texas, Clinton declared:
    “We need a new politics of meaning. … We have to summon up what we believe is morally and ethically and spiritually correct and do the best we can with God’s guidance.”
    A month later, she was pictured as a saint in a Sunday New York Times Magazine exploration of that “politics of meaning” phrase.

    (3) Prayer matters. Clinton joked at the Faith Forum that sometimes her plea is,
    “Oh, Lord, why can’t you help me lose weight?”
    But her daily habit, she said, is praying,
    “for discernment, for wisdom, for strength, for courage … ”
    What she calls “grace notes” matter, too. She described them to adviser Burns Strider as:
    “a gift that is undeserved but bestowed by the everyday joys, beauties, kindnesses, pleasures of life that can strike a deep chord of connection between us and the divine and between us and the mundane.”

    (4) God politics gets tough. In 2008, Clinton battered then-Sen. Barack Obama for saying economically hard-pressed Americans were bitter and “cling to guns or religion.” At the CNN Compassion Forum, Clinton said the Democratic Party:

    “has been viewed as a party that didn’t understand the values and way of life of so many Americans. … It’s important that we make clear that we believe people are people of faith because it is part of their whole being. It is what gives them meaning in life.”

    (5) Last April, Clinton told the annual United Methodist Women Assembly that their shared faith has guided her to be:
    “an advocate for children and families, for women and men around the world who are oppressed and persecuted, denied their human rights and human dignity.”
    Courtesy: Religion News Service
    Photo: Hillary Clinton
    Photo courtesy: Wikipedia
    Publication date: April 13, 2015

    RABBI JOE BIDEN
    5 Things Christians Should Know about the Faith of Joe Biden
    Amanda Casanova | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Monday, November 11, 2019
    Former vice president Joe Biden will be taking a making a run for the presidential office in 2020. Biden is a practicing Catholic and served as the first Catholic vice president in American history. Here are five things to know about Biden and his faith.

    1. HE IS CATHOLIC
    Biden was raised Catholic. He attended grade school at Holy Rosary, a Catholic school in Philadelphia, and later attended Archmere Academy in Delaware, an all-boys Catholic school.
    In an interview with NPR, he said,
    “From the moment I got within the ten-foot-high wrought-iron fence that surrounded the campus and drove up the road—they actually called it the yellow-brick road—I knew where I wanted to go to high school … I’d sit and stare out my bedroom window and dream of the day I would walk through the front doors and take my spot in that seat of learning. I’d dream of the day I would score the touchdown or hit the game-winning home run.” Biden would end up helping his football team go undefeated his senior year.

    2. HE WEARS A ROSARY ON HIS LEFT WRIST
    Biden’s rosary originally belonged to his late son, Beau Biden. Biden’s younger son, Hunter, had given the rosary to Beau. The beads were from Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. Beau died in 2015 after battling brain cancer.
    “I have not taken off the rosary Beau was wearing when he passed, since then. It is my connection with him,” Biden said in an interview.
    He also wrote about his son’s life and eventual death in his book, Promise Me, Dad. “It’s not about religion, per se,” he said on wearing the beads. “It’s about the connection. It makes me feel good. I know he’s with me, just touching it.”
    3. HE HAS BEEN DENIED COMMUNION
    A Catholic church in South Carolina reportedly denied Biden communion because of the former vice president’s support for abortion rights. Father Robert Morey, of Saint Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina said he denied communion because:
    “any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”
    “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that,” Morey said.
    Biden refused to comment, calling it a “private matter.”

    {INSERT}
    Dr. Martin Haskell giving a presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation Conference in 1992 in San Diego. It was a gathering of abortionists — men and women who make their living by killing babies. Haskell was describing to his audience how to do a partial-birth abortion. Listen to his words about how this procedure takes place:

    “The surgeon then introduces large grasping forceps … through the vaginal and cervical canal … He moves the tip of the instrument carefully towards the fetal lower extremities — and pulls the extremity into the vagina …The surgeon then uses his fingers to deliver the opposite lower extremity, then the torso, the shoulders, and the upper extremities. The skull lodges in the internal os. The fetus is oriented … spine up … The surgeon then takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. … the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull–spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon–surgeon then introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents.”
    Haskell, having described these brutal details, shows his audience a video of himself doing one of these procedures. And at the end of the video, after the sound of the suction machine taking the brains out of the baby’s head, the audience applauds.

    WHAT IS A D&E ABORTION?
    The D&E method, used on unborn children 14 weeks or older, involves using a long steel tool to grasp and tear off, by brute force, the arms and legs of the developing human—after which the skull is crushed.
    Dr. Anthony Levatino, an obstetrician-gynecologist who has performed many D&E abortions, describes the procedure:

    “Picture yourself reaching in with the Sopher clamp and grasping anything you can…Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard – really hard. You feel something let go and out pops a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.”
    {END OF INSERT}

    4. HE QUESTIONED HIS FAITH AFTER THE DEATH OF HIS CHILD AND HIS FIRST WIFE
    In 1972, Biden’s first wife, Neilia, and his one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident. Sons Beau and Hunter survived, but Biden said he struggled with his faith after the accident.
    “For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again,” he said.
    Biden said meeting Jill Jacobs a few years later helped give him “back his life.” He has said Jill has encouraged him in his faith over the years, once posting the quote, “Faith sees best in the dark” on his shaving mirror.

    5. HE IS CONSIDERED A FRIEND OF ISRAEL
    Of Biden’s three children, all three married Jews. His late son, Beau Biden, was married to Hallie Olivere, and his daughter, Ashley Biden, married Howard Krein, a Jewish doctor. His other son, Hunter, married Melissa Cohen. The couple has matching tattoos that say, “shalom,” which means “peace” in Hebrew.
    “If I’m going to switch, I know where I’m going,” Biden said in 2016 about his Jewish family members and support for Jews in Israel.
    Biden has long been considered an advocate for Israel’s Jews. He has also talked about his large collection of yarmulkes he has gathered from attending Jewish events.
    Biden has also been honored by the World Jewish Congress for his work in helping Israel and the Jewish people.

    “I am a Zionist, and you need not be a Jew to be a Zionist,” he said.

    BIBLE DON

    5 THINGS CHRISTIANS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DONALD TRUMP’S FAITH
    Kimberly Winston
    | Religion News Service | Wednesday, June 17, 2015

    Donald Trump, the New York rich guy/reality television star/conservative news commentator/real estate mogul/hair disaster, announced he will run for the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States on Tuesday (June 16). To the Faith Fact Machine!

    1. He’s a Presbyterian.
    “First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, is where I went to church,” he told Christian Broadcasting Network in 2012.
    “I’m a Protestant, I’m a Presbyterian. And you know I’ve had a good relationship with the church over the years. I think religion is a wonderful thing. I think my religion is a wonderful religion.”
    Other famous Presbyterians who have run for the highest office and won include Andrew Jackson, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan (who grew up in the Disciples of Christ but joined the Presbyterian Church). Trump has also been a member of Marble Collegiate Church, a Reformed Church in America congregation and once the pulpit of Norman Vincent Peale, author of the mega-best-seller “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
    Bonus faith fact: Trump’s paternal grandmother’s maiden name was “Christ.”

    2. One religion Trump seems to think is not so wonderful is Islam.
    In the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that there is a “Muslim problem.” “I don’t notice Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center,” Trump said, and then moved on to the so-called Ground Zero mosque. “I came out very strongly against the mosque being built virtually across the street.”
    He also called for Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate. “People have birth certificates,” he told O’Reilly. ” … Now, he may have one, but there is something on that birth certificate — maybe religion, maybe it says he’s a Muslim.”
    But Trump assured O’Reilly there are many “fabulous Muslims” in the world.
    And Trump berated political activist Pamela Geller for launching a “Draw the Prophet” contest in Texas. “What is she doing drawing Muhammad? I mean it’s disgusting,” he said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “Isn’t there something else they could be doing? Drawing Muhammad?”

    3. He collects Bibles.
    In the same 2012 CBN interview, Trump said fans often send him Bibles and he keeps every one of them “in a very nice place.” “There’s no way I would ever throw anything, to do anything negative to a Bible,” Trump said. “I would have a fear of doing something other than very positive, so actually I store them and keep them and sometimes give them away to other people but I do get sent a lot of Bibles and I like that. I think that’s great.”

    4. He goes to church “when I can.”
    “Always on Christmas. Always on Easter. Always when there’s a major occasion,” Trump said in 2012. Then he added:
    “I’m a Sunday church person.”

    5. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump Kushner, converted to Judaism.
    “Not only do I have Jewish grandchildren I have a Jewish daughter and I am very honored by that,” he told The Jewish Voice.
    Courtesy: Religion News Service
    ________________________________________
    Editor’s Note: This article (publication date: June 7, 2015) was part of a series leading up to the 2016 presidential election highlighting the professed faith of several of the primary candidates, including: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, Lincoln Chafee, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio. ChristianHeadlines offers these faith summaries as a way of informing voters about the religious beliefs of the candidates.

    PULP FICTION HAS NOTHING ON THIS, IF YOU MADE A VIDEO OF IT!

    Like

    Comment by Dave Rubin | July 6, 2020 | Reply


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